The elder spoke, however, in a more fragmentary way than has been set forth here or in the notes that Alyosha later wrote down. Sometimes he stopped speaking altogether, as if gathering his strength, and gasped for breath, yet he seemed to be in ecstasy. He was listened to with great feeling, though many wondered at his words and saw darkness in them ... Afterwards they all remembered these words. When Alyosha happened to leave the cell for a moment, he was struck by the general excitement and anticipation among the brothers crowding in and near the cell. Some were almost anxious in their anticipation, others were solemn. Everyone expected something immediate and great upon the elder’s falling asleep. [109]This expectation was, from the one point of view, almost frivolous, as it were, yet even the sternest old monks suffered from it. Sternest of all was the face of the old hieromonk Paissy. Alyosha happened to leave the cell only because he had been mysteriously summoned, through a monk, by Rakitin, who came from town with a strange letter sent to Alyosha by Madame Khokhlakov. She informed Alyosha of a curious piece of news, which came at a highly opportune moment. It so happened that the day before, among the faithful peasant women who had come to venerate the elder and receive his blessing, there was a little old lady from town, Prokhorovna, a noncommissioned officer’s widow. She had asked the elder if in a prayer for the dead she could remember her dear son Vasenka, who had gone on official duty far away to Siberia, to Irkutsk, and from whom she had received no news for a year. To which the elder had replied sternly, forbidding it, and likening this sort of commemoration to sorcery. But then, forgiving her because of her ignorance, he had added, “as if looking into the book of the future” (so Madame Khokhlakov put it in her letter), the consolation “that her son Vasya was undoubtedly alive, and that he would either come himself or send a letter shortly, and she should go home and wait for that. And what do you think?” Madame Khokhlakov added ecstatically, “the prophecy came true even literally, and even more than that.” The moment the old lady returned home, she was at once handed a letter from Siberia, which was there waiting for her. And that was not alclass="underline" in this letter, written en route from Ekaterinburg, Vasya informed his mother that he was coming to Russia, that he was returning with some official, and that in about three weeks after she received this letter “he hoped to embrace his mother.” Madame Khokhlakov insistently and ardently begged Alyosha to report this newly occurred “miracle of prediction” immediately to the Superior and all the brothers: “It must be made known to everyone, everyone!” she exclaimed in conclusion. Her letter had been written hastily, in a rush; the writer’s excitement rang in every line of it. But there was nothing for Alyosha to tell the brothers: everyone already knew everything. Rakitin, as he sent the monk for Alyosha, charged him, besides, “most respectfully to notify his reverence Father Paissy as well, that he, Rakitin, had some business with him, of such importance that he could not postpone informing him of it even for a minute, asking him with a low bow to forgive his boldness.” Since the monk had brought Rakitin’s request to Father Paissy before finding Alyosha, it only remained for Alyosha, after reading the letter, to hand it over to Father Paissy as a document. And then even that stern and mistrustful man, as he read, frowning, the news of the “miracle,” could not quite contain a certain inner emotion. His eyes flashed, and a solemn and knowing smile suddenly came to his lips.
“Shall we not behold greater things?” he suddenly let fall.
“We shall, we shall!” the monks around him repeated, but Father Paissy frowned again and asked them all to tell no one about it for the time being, “not until we have more confirmation, for there is much frivolousness among people in the world, and this incident also may have taken place naturally,” he added prudently, as if for the sake of conscience, but almost not believing in his own reservation, as his listeners very well saw. Within an hour, of course, the “miracle” became known to the whole monastery, and even to many of the laymen who had come there for the liturgy. More than anyone else, the new miracle seemed to have struck the little monk “from St. Sylvester’s,” who had come to the monastery the day before from his small Obdorsk monastery in the far north. The day before, standing near Madame Khokhlakov, he had bowed to the elder and, pointing to that lady’s “healed” daughter, had asked him with great feeling: “How do you dare do such deeds?”
He was already in some perplexity as it was, and almost did not know what to believe. The previous evening he had visited the monastery’s Father Ferapont in his private cell beyond the apiary, and was struck by this meeting, which had made an extraordinary and terrifying impression on him. This old Father Ferapont was that same aged monk, the great faster and keeper of silence, whom we have already mentioned as an adversary of the elder Zosima, and above all of the institution of elders, which he regarded as a harmful and frivolous innovation. He was an extremely dangerous adversary, even though, as a keeper of silence, he hardly ever spoke a word to anyone. He was dangerous mainly because many brothers fully sympathized with him, and among visiting laymen many honored him as a great ascetic and a righteous man, even though they regarded him as unquestionably a holy fool. Indeed, it was this that fascinated them. Father Ferapont never went to the elder Zosima. Though he lived in the hermitage, he was not much bothered by hermitage rules, again because he behaved like a real holy fool. He was about seventy-five years old, if not more, and lived beyond the hermitage apiary, in a corner of the wall, in an old, half-ruined wooden cell built there in ancient times, back in the last century, for a certain Father Iona, also a great faster and keeper of silence, who had lived to be a hundred and five and of whose deeds many curious stories were still current in the monastery and its environs. Father Ferapont had so succeeded that he, too, was finally placed, about seven years earlier, in this same solitary little cell, really just a simple hut, but which rather resembled a chapel because it housed such a quantity of donative icons with donative icon lamps eternally burning before them, which Father Ferapont was appointed, as it were, to look after and keep lit. He ate, it was said (and in fact it was true), only two pounds of bread in three days, not more; it was brought to him every three days by the beekeeper who lived there in the apiary, but even with this beekeeper who served him, Father Ferapont rarely spoke a word. These four pounds of bread, together with a prosphora, [110]which the Superior regularly sent the blessed man after the late Sunday liturgy, [111]constituted his entire weekly sustenance. The water in his jug was changed every day. He rarely appeared at a liturgy. Visiting admirers sometimes saw him spend the whole day in prayer without rising from his knees or turning around. And even if he occasionally got into conversation with them, he was brief, curt, strange, and almost always rude. There were, however, very rare occasions when he would start talking with visitors, but for the most part he merely uttered some one strange saying, which always posed a great riddle for the visitor, and then, despite all entreaties, would give no further explanation. He was not a priest but just a simple monk. There was, however, a very strange rumor among the most ignorant people that Father Ferapont was in communication with the heavenly spirits and conversed only with them, which was why he was silent with people. The Obdorsk monk found his way to the apiary on directions from the beekeeper, also rather a silent and surly monk, and went to the corner where Father Ferapont’s cell stood. “Maybe he’ll speak, since you’re a visitor, or maybe you’ll get nothing out of him,” the beekeeper warned him. The monk, as he himself recounted later, approached in great fear. It was already rather late. This time Father Ferapont was sitting by the door of the cell on a low bench. Over him a huge old elm was lightly rustling. The evening was turning cool. The Obdorsk monk prostrated before the holy man and asked for his blessing.
“Do you want me to prostrate in front of you, too, monk?” said Father Ferapont. “Arise!”